Ever witness an emergency and have a photo on your phone you wish you could send to 911? You’ll soon be able to.

The Jacksonville Department of Public Safety will soon be rolling out a new communications system for the digital age.

JPD Chief Mike Yaniero, Jacksonville Department of Public Safety director, said the changes are going to fundamentally alter the way they do business, from the way operators answer calls to the way officers respond to emergencies.

“The digital format is going to allow us to locate cellphones quickly, to get text messages, photographs and videos,” Yaniero said.

Today’s 911 service is on an analog system, and virtually all the information is transferred via voice. With the new system, Yaniero said those calling 911 will be able to send operators texts, pictures and videos, as well as communicate distress over the phone line.

The process will be as simple as texting information to 911.

Operators then will send that information to responding officers in their vehicles, ideally before they arrive on scene. The information will also be available for later use down the road in court if any criminal charges are made.

The new system will also allow the Department of Public Safety to automatically locate callers based on their geographic location when they call into 911.

The current 911 system has a “limited ability to handle overflow situations,” meaning callers could receive a busy signal. Yaniero said the new system would be able to control the congestion better.

The timeline for the new system starts with the contract this month, equipment delivery and testing in March or April and the system “going live” in June to coincide with the JPD and the JFD moving into its new building.

In preparation for the new communications system, the Department of Public Safety updated its computer system — from 10-plus-years-old to state-of-the-art software.

In addition, the Department is upgrading its radio system to a digital system from the current analog system, which Yaniero said will be more reliable, robust and will increase capacity for use in emergencies.

The new system has been designed by the city and the county and will encompass the entire county, according to Yaniero. The most important feature of the new radio system in Yaniero’s eyes is that it will be redundant, meaning if the system or any towers go down, the capabilities will remain the same.

The new radio system will also have increased coverage and give those using it the ability to talk inside and outside of buildings and in stairwells, for example.

The new 911 communications system and part of the radio system will be funded by the State 911 Fund, which comes from a portion of cellphone and land line bills. The towers for the radio system will be funded by the city’s general fund, according to Yaniero.

Page 2 of 2 - Officials said $1 million has been budgeted over five years for the 911 system, and it will have a recurring expense of $600,000. Another $3.9 million has been budgeted for the radio system.

Yaniero said the improvements will coincide with the move into the $23 million Public Safety Center. Yaniero said the force has simply outgrown the space it currently uses. They currently house evidence for cases in seven different locations rather than one central space; they use an old city garage to process vehicles, and they do not have an area large enough to fit all the employees for department-wide meetings.

The new center will fix all those problems and offer new features, such as a brand new crime lab and the Intelligent Trafficking Center, which will allow the Department of Public Safety to control traffic lights within the city remotely to deal with heavy traffic caused by collisions, emergencies or early releases from Camp Lejeune. Some cameras have already gone up at certain intersections in the city — such as West Huff Drive and Western Boulevard — in preparation for the launch of the center. Yaniero said the cameras will not be used for a ticketing system, but simply to help them monitor traffic flow.

He noted that it’s not about just moving into a new building, but impacting people by improving their quality of life.

Yaniero mentioned 11 people whose hearts stopped in the last year but lived because first responders from the department were able to respond to a scene quickly and render aid.

“How fast we get to the scene on priority calls ... every second we improve that time, it improves our ability to impact those 11 lives,” Yaniero said, adding that seconds can mean the difference between life and death. “That’s what all those improvements are about.”